


whisper hello (i miss you quite terribly)

by okaynextcrisis



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series - Jude Watson & Dave Wolverton
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 08:13:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11077572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaynextcrisis/pseuds/okaynextcrisis
Summary: He could move on, or he could just build the damn time machine.





	whisper hello (i miss you quite terribly)

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed, predictably, from Hellogoodbye, because Mia still can't title.

He goes back for her, as he absolutely shouldn’t, as he cannot stop himself from doing, as he was always, always, always, going to do.

_I know why you’re building this time machine,_ Obi-Wan burst out last night, throwing down the calibrator he’d been using to adjust the device’s tiny clock, his lab assistant’s face tightening in uncharacteristic emotion, his skin going pale under ginger stubble. _This isn’t science.It’s a personal crusade._

_So what if it is,_ Qui-Gon had said, his jaw clenching, caught off guard but unwilling to back down.

Obi-Wan’s face had smoothed out, anger in blue eyes fading to pity, and it was worse.Qui-Gon could feel the heat rising in his face, the shame that he still, still, _still_ couldn’t let go, couldn’t move on.

_Qui-Gon.  You can’t save her.  You have to know that._

Maybe he did know that, and maybe he didn’t, but he doesn’t care.

_You can’t stop me,_ he’d said, a threat instead of an answer. 

Tahl, a consummate scientist, the brightest thinker in her field, would have been appalled. 

Obi-Wan had only sighed, then, gently, and taken off his lab coat, laying it neatly on the counter. _I miss her, too,_ he’d said, and walked out.

Qui-Gon goes back to exactly fifteen minutes before a date and time engraved on his heart by five years of bitter recriminations, the doorway of a lab where he was supposed to meet her to take her to lunch, that half a decade of time and untold gallons of Scotch have been unable to wash away.If he hadn’t gotten caught up in his own research…if he hadn’t lost track of time…

The sight of her willowy form in her lab coat, her dark hair piled up on her head, her voice as she explains a postulate to her students, corrects a measurement on an experiment…

Then she turns, and their eyes meet, and he can’t think anymore, much less speak.

He can’t tell her why he’s here; he’s already decided that.He just needs to get her away from this building, for the next ten minutes, and he doesn’t care what he has to say or do to make it happen.Tahl will be angry with him later, maybe, but if she's alive...

But her smile is tender, and she whispers something to her students and follows him out into the hall, without any need for subterfuge or mendacity.

When she kisses him, he’s warm for the first time in one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five days, and it’s worth it: worth it if he can’t make the machine work again, if he can’t bring her home, if the entire observable universe goes to hell because of it.Home is here, and she loves him, and he loves her, and they never needed more than that, did they?

She smiles, that half smile that always made him feel simultaneously safe and caught off guard.“You don’t have to pretend.I know who you are.Obi-Wan came back last night to warn me.”

Of course he did.Qui-Gon cannot imagine how, or when.But of course he did.

She lets him absorb that for a moment, her green and gold eyes watching him carefully.“So kiss me again and get out of here.”

“Tahl—”

“What did you think was going to happen now?”She’s using her scientist voice now, like she’s testing a bad theory, the tone that used to hash out hypotheses with him till four in the morning, that argued every paper he ever wrote before he submitted it, and his chest aches with the familiarity of it, the perfect sameness of her.He’s imagined her every day since they put her in the ground, and it’s nothing, nothing, _nothing_ like the real thing. 

“Did you think I was going to risk rupturing the entire fabric of the universe to go with you, to a time I don’t belong in?And that’s assuming it’s even possible.Smart money says I don’t get halfway out the building before I suffer a statically unlikely stroke or fall victim to a fatal pigeon attack.And even if none of that happened…what would we possibly do?Trot me out like a show pony?Hide me in the basement for the rest of my life?Yours?I’m a scientist, Qui, not a ghost.” 

“Then I’ll stay here with you,” he says, as easily as it feels.Maybe, when it happens, when the experiment in the lab next door goes wrong, he can shield her body with his, save her if not himself.Maybe, with the benefit of foresight, they’ll both survive.Maybe they’ll die together, and it’ll still be better.He won’t be without her.He won’t be alone.

Her lips tilt upwards, and he knows he's about to lose, as he always, always, _always_ , did.“And cheat me out of being the research partner of the scientist who finally cracks time travel?No.You’ll go back, and submit your findings, and give interviews, and get thoroughly, embarrassingly famous.You can dedicate your Nobel Prize to me.I’d like that.You can talk about me in your acceptance speech, how brave I was when you came back, how you could never have figured it out without my work.”

The gleam in her eyes hurts most of all.“I was onto it, wasn’t I?What I was working on before I died.That’s where you started.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” he says, through the tightness in his throat, and it’s true, in more ways than one.

She nods, once, and if there’s something liquid in her eyes in this moment it’s nothing to the tears soaking his beard.“Now go, before I change my mind.” 

Her head tilts.“And you never know.Maybe, if you get the kinks worked out, you can come back and visit, and tell me how nice the parties in Stockholm are.I’d like that, too.”

He never could say no to her, and he can’t say it now.

She kisses him, one perfect moment to last him the rest of his life, and she pushes him away, and he begins to run, away from the terrible thing that is about to happen, away from the only place he wants to be and the only thing that will ever truly matter to him.

The explosion, at least, covers the sound of his sobs.


End file.
